- The latest on Fentanyl deaths.
- “Using published data from the Netherlands and Belgium, where medically assisted death is legal, we estimated that…Medical assistance in dying could reduce annual health care spending across Canada by between $34.7 million and $138.8 million, exceeding the $1.5–$14.8 million in direct costs associated with its implementation.”
- Why are we still funding the WHO?
- Why we need “right to try”: family had to travel to Italy for life saving drug for their daughter that the FDA was slow to approve in the US.
- More than half of eligible physicians received a payment from a pharmaceutical drug or device maker over 10 years.
Category: Cost of Healthcare
Bad Deal: Hospitals Discover Concierge Medicine
I just read about a troubling trend: Hospital-owned concierge medical practices. This is where hospitals establish a concierge practice for the purpose of attracting a few hundred wealthy members (I mean patients) willing to pay $2,000 to $4,000 apiece to be able to get quick access to their physician.
Wednesday Links
- Cancer phobia: In 2017, 21.3 million American women had cancer screening tests even though they were outside the age ranges for recommended screening. 10.1 million men outside the recommended age ranges had a PSA test.
- People with Obamacare health insurance are being switched to other plans without their knowledge or consent by rogue agents.
- Why are expensive cancer treatments excluded from Medicare’s price negotiations?
- Henry Miller: “The vaccines saved 2.9 million lives, prevented 12.5 million hospitalizations, and saved $500 billion in hospitalization.”
Tuesday Links
- Food stamp households spend a disproportionate share of their food budget on unhealthy items, such as sugary beverages and prepared desserts. And it’s worse than other low-income households who don’t have food stamps.
- Social Security tells Kotlikoff the number of Social Security clawback letters per year is probably closer to 3 million. (It started at 1M in a congressional hearing; then jumped to 2M in answer to a FOIA request by KFF; and now it’s at 3M. (No telling what the real answer is.)
- Less than half of the benefit of Obamacare subsides goes to the newly insured. One-third of it is wasted.
- In 2023, 79 percent of (Obamacare) enrollees received subsidies (up from 44 percent in 2015), at an average cost of $20,739 per enrollee gaining coverage.